At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

Great user interface
small
well specified
integration with iOS apps
1TB hard disk

Cons

No wireless connection built in

Our Verdict

We really like the Live Hub, it brings together a decent set of online services, and shares well between all your Macs while giving you access to your media on your TV. Though some may not like the limitation to wired networking as standard out of the box it’s not a massive shame, and wireless can be added at a later date anyway. With a 1TB disk and the online services built in, the Western Digital Live Hub really is a very compelling product.

Bringing your digital life to the big screen is how Western Digital describes its WD TV Live Hub, and we’d be hard pushed to disagree.

The drive is well specified with HDMI, composite and component video out. It has two USB ports, one on the front and one on the rear. There’s also an Ethernet port that allows you to connect the WD TV Live Hub to your network for easy sharing and access to online features. You can use one of the USB ports mentioned above to add wireless capability to the Live Hub, with an optional adaptor if wired networking isn’t your thing.

Thanks to the network capability not only can you share and copy data to the drive easily, but you can access a number of online services as well. Vimeo, YouTube, Facebook and TuneIn Radio are all capable of being accessed through the Live Hub. BBC iPlayer isn’t currently available, which may be a problem for some, however, we expect that more services will be added over time.

With one of the best interfaces on test, the TV Live Hub makes a great first impression. Western Digital has managed the impressive feat of taking a fairly mundane and uninteresting task, and making it look good and be useful and easy to use at the same time. Though animated menus might seem a little trite, they work well and make the experience that much better.

The Western Digital Live Hub is nicely designed and has a good balance of features too

The WD TV Live Hub is very well specified and has a host of extras that make it better value for money. There’s a free app for iPads and iPhones that allows you to upload your pictures and movies directly to the Western Digital drive from wherever you have access to the internet. Little extra features like this all add value.